Munich gunman seen as loner who plotted attack

Published 1:49 pm, Sunday, July 24, 2016

Mourners gather to pray at a memorial for the victims at the Olympia shopping center in Munich.

Mourners gather to pray at a memorial for the victims at the Olympia shopping center in Munich.

Photo: CHRISTOF STACHE, AFP/Getty Images

Munich gunman seen as loner who plotted attack

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

MUNICH — The teenager behind the deadly shooting rampage in Munich was a withdrawn loner obsessed with playing “killer” video games, a victim of bullying who suffered from panic attacks set off by contacts with other people, investigators said Sunday, adding that he had planned the attack for a year.

Law enforcement officials piecing together a portrait of the 18-year-old shooter said he was seeing a doctor up to last month for treatment of depression and psychiatric problems that began in 2015 with inpatient hospital care and then was followed up with outpatient visits.

They said medication for his problems was found in his room. But toxicological and autopsy results were still not available, so it’s not yet clear whether he was taking the medicine when he went on his shooting spree Friday, killing nine people and leaving dozens wounded.

The German-Iranian, identified only as David S. because of German privacy laws, had earlier been described by investigators as being bullied by schoolmates at least once four years ago and being fascinated by previous mass shootings. None of the bullies was among his victims, however, and none of those killed was known to him, investigators said.

The attack Friday took place on the fifth anniversary of the killing of 77 people by Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik, whose victims included dozens of young people. Investigators said the Munich shooter had researched that slaughter online and had visited the site of a previous school shooting in the German town of Winnenden last year.

“He had been planning this crime since last summer,” said Robert Heimberger, Bavaria’s top official, citing a manifesto linked to the shooting found in the gunman’s locked room in the apartment he shared with his parents and brother.

Heimberger said he could not reveal details of the document yet because there were “many more terabytes” of information to evaluate, but he described the gunman as a “devoted player” of group Internet “killer games” pitting virtual shooters against each other.

Weapons are strictly controlled in Germany, and police are still trying to determine how the shooter obtained the Glock 17 used in the attack.

The shooter’s father saw a video of the start of his son’s rampage on social media and went to police as it was taking place, Heimberger said.